tavis: that evening from washington. i am tavis smiley. tonight part to of our look at poverty in america. we are joined by an all-star panel. dr. kanye west, jeffrey sachs, former house speaker newt gingrich -- dr. cornel west. john graham, and marcia fudge. we are glad to have joined us

for night to of our conversation, vision for a new america, coming up right now. [applause] >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminate hunger, and we have a lot of work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

[applause] tavis: let me start with the first and i'll work my way back this way. the best work over so many years now, whether one agrees or disagrees with the findings, and certain spent the most time with children in poor communities, and no one has done anything better in establishing in helping us better understand the link between education and poverty. we all know there is a link between education and poverty, but jonathan, give me the top line of this new book, fire in the ashes, and the 25 years you spent with children and a link to poverty. >> cornell always gets my blood boiling because i agree with him so deeply.

i was a young teacher in boston and a white guy living in the black community, and the black ministers did me an honor of letting me stand by his side the first time he came to preach in boston common, and his words changed my life forever. that is when i turned my back on an academic life and decided to teach fourth graders in our poorest neighborhoods. i get so angry on his birthday or on martin luther king day -- i heard politicians who turned their back totally on every single thing he lived and died for, never lifted a finger to bring an end to apartheid in schooling, which is now at a higher rate than it was the year he died, and they say, "i, too, had a dream." you cannot play games with the dreams of our prophets. dr. king did not say he had a

dream that someday in the canyons of our cities, north and south, we will have tests and anxiety-ridden schools. that was not his dream. we've ripped apart his legacy, and then we use his name in vain. my thing, as you know, is children. children in their schools. i'm not an economist. i was scared of numbers, but my world is children. the only tried and proven avenue of exit for the children -- the poorest children in this country from the destitution of their parents is to give them an absolutely terrific, exciting, beautiful, spectacular, and expensive public education.

[applause] and to fund it not simply at the same high level as the richest suburbs, but at a higher level because those children need it more. to say one more thing about that -- in the past few years, class size has been soaring in our schools because they have been laying off teachers and. i walked into public schools in new york where i find 36 children in a fourth grade class like back in the 1960's. i walked into a high school in los angeles -- 40 kids in a 10th grade social studies class. i made the mistake of asking the teacher right in front of the kids how she teaches 40 kids in a classroom. she said, "do not ever ask that question. find out." and then she left the room.

there are a lot of factors that go into terrific education, but one thing i know for sure is that the size of the class a teacher teaches is one of the most important factors in the entire pedagogic world. [applause] i have heard plenty of old time conservatives -- pat buchanan once yelled at me -- remember him? he once yelled at me on tv and said that was nonsense. "i have 50 in my class and it did not hurt me." i said, "well, i'm not sure." [laughter] the fact of the matter is, i have rich friends that are so much like me. they will say to me, jonathan -- these are people who read my books and say they care about these poor kids in the bronx.

they will say to me, jonathan, does class size really matter for the children? i always ask them where their kids go to school. how many children are in their class is. typically they are in a lovely suburb -- 16, 18, parents panic when it gets to 21. if they go to lovely private schools like sidwell friends here in washington, it is more like 15. then i see these kids packed into classrooms where there are more children than shares. -- than chairs. i do not know how everybody else on this panel feels, but here's what i believe -- a very small class size and the intimate, affectionate attention enables a good teacher to get to every little girl and boy -- if that is good for the son of a

prosperous position or a successful lawyer -- physician or a successful lawyer or a daughter of a senator or congressman or the president himself -- then it is good for the poorest child of the poorest woman in america. [applause] tavis: getting everybody involved here to have some fun -- let me come to you. jonathan talks so brilliantly -- i am thinking of the chicago teachers strike just months ago. the former chief of staff, he just announced -- now the mayor of chicago -- he demonized those teachers. most of the so-called liberal newspapers demonized the teachers, including "the new york times."

one thing that hit me so viscerally -- the one decision that both of the teachers and the mayor got right was to leave the schools open during the strike so in the kids would have something to eat. remember this? but for those schools remain open, those kids in chicago would not -- 98% that qualify for the free lunch program, they would have nothing to eat daily while the teachers were on strike. your work is trying to establish an america, under free communities -- what does that say to us that in the city of chicago, this grand city of chicago, where the president is from -- i am not trying to

demonize him -- schools have to be left open for the kids of that city to have something to eat? >> what does it say about america that we cannot decide on how to educate our children but all of a sudden we can think about what they are eating and make sure they get a meal? at the same time, think about, ok, let's make sure the kids are getting an education and school lunch, but forget about school breakfast. i think about the legacy of martin luther king -- if i can dip into that strong tradition and think about what he said, let us be dissatisfied. divine dissatisfaction with what is going on with this country in terms of our education system, but definitely with hunger. the fact that we have 50 million americans who live in food in secure homes, hungry holmes, last year. the majority were homes that had young children.

if you think about it, one in four young children with an america under the age of six is suffering from food insecurity. we know that affects their childhood development. we know increases hospitalization rates. it costs us an enormous amount, not only socially, and human suffering, but economic suffering in terms of the health-care consequences and costs. long before a child even crosses the threshold of kindergarten, that child is potentially truncated because they are food insecure, they are hungry, their families to not have enough money for food. i went to pick back up on you, congressman gingrich -- when you say our programs do not work, you are absolutely wrong. i come from a tradition of science, a scientific background. i do scientific research on hunger and have been doing that for 15 years. i want to tell you, the food stamp program is one of the

single most important programs that we have in this country. [applause] thank you. we know that food stamps prevent hospitalization for children. it is a good investment. think about pediatric hospitalization, it costs $24,000 for three days. that same amount of money could feed a family of four for one year. that is a great investment because it prevents hospitalization. it promotes job development, cognitive, social, emotional development, so by the time children are in school they can learn well. let's hope they can have breakfast and can get lunch as well so they can learn and listen to this teachers. learn about those traditions. the other program that worked beautifully is the wic program, women, infants, and children. i know you want to bring in the other people -- i have to speak to this. it brings the comments so far together. if we think about the program,

50% of the newborns in our country are poor enough to participate. one in two newborns. that is awesome effectiveness, awesome reach -- the rest of the world looks to us as a leader in making sure that we are preventing malnutrition and low birth weight. we know that is effective. but if you look at on the other side, think about the magnitude of child the poverty -- childhood poverty, that one in two eligible -- we have a major problem on our hands. when you think about what will happen, if sequestration happens, the discretionary budget -- how is it possible that the wic program is in the discretionary budget along with whether we build bombs? [applause] the wic program is potentially at risk if we are not careful.

we must make sure that that program and the other programs such as early childhood education are protected, because for every $1 we spend on wic, over $3 is saved in medicare expenditures. we know that if wic actually works -- you are wrong in terms of whether our federal programs work. the two programs are phenomenal. they are fabulous. they work and they promote child health and well-being and make us a better country. [applause] tavis: one of the reasons why we are here for this conversation is to talk about what works, to debate what does not. we are going to get into that, i promise. the speaker will get a chance to respond and all of you will get a chance to respond. i want to -- i promise you we can mix things up.

we are going to get into solutions. there is something they have been advancing called the robin hood tax. it is gaining steam, all kinds of americans are starting to buy into this. i want you to hear about a as one solution to the problem. please welcome roseanne. >> as we all know, wall street does not pay its fair share. there is a minimum of 50 cents on stocks. we all pay sales tax on everything that we buy.

we sell something, we pay tax. this is paying to wall street -- you have gotten a pass. when you talk about jobs and education, i want to ask you, where are the jobs? they are not just trickling down or bubbling up -- there are no jobs in this country. i work for the labor movement -- it is being decimated by the right wing. i will talk about the financial transaction tax -- this is a part of the solution. i want to tell you, i represent registered nurses in the unions across this country. they are of the finest tradition of martin luther king -- they are about humanity. they do not make distinctions among patients. they do not care if you are rich or if you are poor, if you are black or if you are white, if you are a man or if you are a woman -- you are their patient. they protect you, the fight for you. what they're finding is because of profits in the health-care industry, the most inept system in the industrial world, the american medical system -- patients are being pushed out, children are coming with malnutrition. sometimes the only lunches they

get are when they go into the emergency room. this -- the shame that basically our decision makers in wall street have brought to our country is presented to nurses on every shift at every hour in the hospitals in this country. you know what i love about nurses? they do not stop in terms of fighting. they fight like hell with their hospitals in terms of taking care of their patients. they see people when it is very late -- people who have not had cancer screenings. people who basically cannot afford their medication as the drug companies make $60 billion in profits. billions of dollars and trillions sitting in the reserves of the wealthy, and children are starving. people are at almost near-death. what the nurses have done is to say i will fight for them with in my hospital, but i will also fight for them in the streets.

we've started a robin hood campaign that says, wall street, you are going to pay your fair share. i know jeffrey sacks is with us on this. we have been working with people all around the world. there are people on this board who have said, austerity is not the answer, we should tax wall street trades. [applause] basically, it is time to give something back. i actually wonder, i really wonder, do they care about what the nurses see? do they care about the vulnerability of america right now? one illness away from bankruptcy -- that is where everyone is. most people are underinsured. there will be 30 million people uninsured, even with obamacare, and even the people who have insurance cannot figure their insurance out.

ultimately, the insurance companies are just robbing the country, along with the financial sector. people of being left out of jobs being created. [applause] their lousy jobs -- some of the jobs being created are hardly what you would consider jobs. i work for as a member of the labor movement. i represent nurses and fight like hell to make sure they can fight for their patience and themselves. but their retirement is under attack -- why should their retirement be under attack? the entitlement -- that is an entitlement? that is our money that paid for those entitlements that is being recycled back to us. we are pretty angry. we are organizing a movement -- it is in the streets and in congress and across the world. when are not going to stop. four nurses, they are not policy-makers. they do not have the comfort of being able to step back and say, that is not my problem.

it is their problem every second of every day with hospitals. would you like me to talk about that robin hood tax? tavis: i will come back to you, i promise. [laughter] you mentioned congress -- please welcome congresswoman marcia fudge. [applause] i'm trying to imagine -- we talked earlier about the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling. it is clear there is legislative gridlock in this town. what happens in the months to come with this kind of gridlock -- we already see the battle lines being drawn about what is to happen when these entitlements did on the table with in march. what happens to the poor as you see it in the coming months? >> let me first say, thank you so much for allow me to be part of this conversation. i am happy that you have been carrying on this kind of

conversation over the last few years. let me try and see if i can put something in context for you -- i think that is something we never really talk about. a lot of this fiscal cliff stuff is really smoke and mirrors -- when you sit back and realize the largest portion of the debt of this country is really three things -- one is two wars we never paid for, what is a medicare part that we never paid for, and the other part is the bush tax cuts. those of the largest portions of the debt of this nation. what they're trying to do now by cutting what you call entitlements and i call and benefits -- [applause] is to protect the cuts they have already made. if you look at where we are, earned benefits, and there is really only one entitlement, which is medicaid -- if we do

not have enough of a moral imperative to take care of the poorest people in this country, i do not know what we are all doing here. we have to stop and think about how we can, in a congress that is supposed to represent the will of the people, we ignore 46 million people. it did not just art under this president -- when george bush became president of the united states, 17 million people were in poverty. when he left, 30 million people were in poverty. that does not include them going into the ditch that we went into as he was leaving office. this has been a problem for a very long time. i think what we have to understand is you cannot just cut and constrict government. when you do, it goes all the way down the pipeline. it is not a cut -- is a shift. when you start cutting at the

local, state, and county levels, you create a bigger problem than you think you have solved. it is all a game -- tavis: i have one more person to get involved -- let me ask for a follow-up. you accurately laid out what happened to poverty and the bush and ministration, and then stopped, as if we stopped than. when barack obama was elected -- poverty numbers continue to get worse. on barack obama -- put the facts on the table. they kept getting worse under barack obama -- sachs writes about this. demonize,ing this to but i'm wondering how is your mind that poverty gets made a priority, whether the president is a republican or a democrat? >> i think i did say that when we went into the ditch as bush came out of office, poverty

continue to increase. there is no question about that. it has increased significantly. i do not believe that as a nation, not just the white house but the bottom up, any of us have done enough to address the issues of poverty in this country. we talk about dr. king. one of the things he said was there comes a time when silence is betrayal. [applause] any president is going to address issues we may can address. whoever the president is -- republican or democrat, no matter what. i can say in all fairness that even though i do not believe any of us have done enough, if you look at the two major pieces of legislation that were passed by this white house, obamacare, which everybody has been yelling and screaming about, significantly help poor people, significantly. [applause]

if you look at the stimulus, in the stimulus there was $2 billion for food stamps. there was more money for head start and has ever been put into a bill for head start. there was more money put into poor schools. pell grants were increased. unemployment was extended. i am not saying it was enough, but i am saying, put the facts on the table and go from there. if we had not done that, it would be worse. tavis: fair enough. that's all we have time for this evening, but we have much more for the next two nights. thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. [applause] >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i am tavis smiley.

join me next time for part three of our conversation. that is next time. we will see you then. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminate hunger, and we have a lot of work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. >> be more.